At What Point
by GoForTehGig
Summary: Oneshot. My epitaph for Gallifrey's eulogy. At what point did he decide to forcibly take the memory from the one who could have remembered?


At what point did the Doctor suspect he was talking to himself? At what point did he suspect the familiar face—the one head never seen from the outside —wasn't real? At what point did he suspect he was project an image of himself?  
Or; at what point did the curator suspect he was talking to himself? (Probably when he saw the TARDIS parked in the middle of the room.) He kept smiling and winking, sharing half-formed jokes in an attempt to make the older (younger) ((older)) man recognize him. At what point did they both know?  
At what point did the Doctor begin to doubt? At what point did he begin to touch the walls, the bench, the teacup, the painting—just to see that they weren't floating away before his eyes?  
He had interacted with different versions of himself, and they interacted with him in the usual way he talked (didn't talk) with himself.  
At what point did the Doctor begin to suspect he was dreaming?  
Oh, that was easy. The painting, the fez, the him in the trench coat, the him with Gallifrey still alive in his eyes, Queen Elizabeth, the link to a home already purged, the big red button, (there wasn't a big red button last time. He wished there had been. In his reality, there was only dust; kicked up by Dalek lasers into the eyes of the grime-cloaked; blood and wounds; the hope of complete genocide wired into machinery; the stability of the Lock hanging by the act of not thinking about the 2.74 billion children. In reality, it wasn't a choice made relationally by daylight, it was exhaustion of terrible warfare and his friends being slaughtered in front of him which forced him to act), the Time Lock that wasn't a Time Lock but a permanently displaced loop —and then the him with a cane, without the scarf he remembered wearing around his neck, standing the curator. (Four/Five.)  
At what point did the Doctor vow never to sleep; to keep the memory (dream) awake? At what point (43 hours later) did the Doctor collapse in the TARDIS, in the midst of furiously writing down the memory (dream) of Gallifrey,, which was not dying and reliving and dying and reliving but living, just living? (He hadn't even gotten to the Zygon horse before he collapsed.)

At what point did Twelve/Thirteen close the time vortexes? At what point did he survey the irreparable damage the attempt to move the time-space central planet out of time and space with only thirteen TARDISes had caused, closed his eyes, and woke his past (Eleven/Twelve) up from the forgetful slumber? He, the puppeteer, the mastermind, had failed to save Gallifrey (again) in the parallel universe, with a parallel him who had a big red button and an easy way out. Parallel Gallifrey was the same as his Gallifrey, though. Unchangeable. Unmovable. All that it had resulted in was the cold hard fact that he would always choose genocide of his own people over genocide of the multiverse.  
He had four hundred (nine hundred? two thousand? Who knew anymore?) years after the original incident to think and rethink his decision, but he knew in his hearts saving Gallifrey was impossible.  
But yet, when he summoned all himselves to the parallel Gallifrey to save it, they (he) tried. They (he) tried as hard as he could to save Gallifrey instead, and it cost him a regeneration of wear and tear instead of (the first time) rebounding explosion from the machinery of the Time Lock's seal. It cost most of them (him) their memory of the incident.  
At what point did he decide to forcibly take the memory from the one who could have remembered (Eleven/Twelve)?  
At the curator.  
Universes shouldn't have crossed. He shouldn't have pulled himselves into it. He (himselves) shouldn't have failed to save Gallifrey, because the Doctor that belonged in that universe would have saved it by himself. Except he interfered.  
Eleven/Twelve wasn't allowed to remember because he, the mastermind, Twelve/Thirteen, wouldn't let himself remember the curator's smile.  
His own smile.  
His own, fourth/fifth regeneration, wizened young never-could-be parallel (no more) self.  
His own parallel smile.  
The one that said: 'I had a big red button.'  
The one that said: 'Since I tried to pull Gallifrey out of time first instead of going back (too late) to fix my mistake and try again, I saved my planet. I saved my home.'  
The charge must now be genocide.  
So the Doctor (Twelve/Thirteen) wept for the failure One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven (Twelve) thought was a victory in their memories (dreams), and the Doctor (Eleven/Twelve) slept, and everyone had bad dreams.


End file.
